Promote Your Location-based Marketing Campaign

There are three types of media that you can use to spread the word about your location-based (LBS) campaign — paid, earned, and owned. These include advertising (paid), your web-site, or places like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, along with your physical properties (owned) and public relations, as well as conversations about you on the social web (earned).

Understanding the differences between different media types and how the three work best together is key when it comes to building a good location-based marketing campaign.

Paid: Paying to leverage the power of a channel to drive eyeballs to your content or call to action. You use it to cast a wide net and drive qualified feet to a property.

This is the most scalable and predictable of the three media types. It also has the longest track record of the three, making it the best understood. Click-through rates are typically low and are continuously declining as people lose trust in big media.

Earned: The customer as a channel. This levels the playing field between people and brands. There is no transparency and you have the ability to reach anyone. But you have no control and may come across some negativity.

Owned: A channel that is controlled by a person or brand. The key is that other platforms, brands, or people cannot change the experience without your permission. You create content that builds relationships and gives customers and prospects more reasons to interact with your brand.

You maintain control, you can do whatever you want whenever you want to; no one can yank the rug out from under you. You have no guarantees that anyone will see your owned media.

Credit: Courtesy of Allen & Gerritsen

A matrix on paid, earned, and owned media.

Paid, earned, and owned media work best in conjunction with one another. Paid media may not be as popular as it once was, but earned and owned media have increased in popularity.